Entries in Open World
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fter The success of both Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza 6: The Song of Life on the PlayStation 4, it was no surprise that SEGA had announced to Weekly Famitsu Magazine that it was planning to re-release the entire series of the mega-hit property onto the PlayStation 4. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is the latest entry to spear-head the effort shortly after the release of Yakuza 6, an update to the second entry of the franchise, and the last one to have released on the PlayStation 2 before Yakuza had made the transition to the PlayStation 3 years later.

In what may arguably be the strangest title of the lineup in contrast to the spin-offs and seventh-generation entries, SEGA didn’t pull any punches in ensuring that Yakuza Kiwami 2 captured all of the wacky narratives and tongue-in-cheek writing of the original game. This PlayStation 4 remaster brings it all together with the new Dragon game engine that was introduced in Yakuza 6, and an assortment of other enhancements that make the trip back to the Kamurocho the best one yet.

he Yakuza franchise may owe a great deal of its legacy to Shenmue, but it’s done a great deal more on its own, and rightfully escaped the shadow that Yu Suzuki’s classic had once cast over it. Spanning across five epic chapters, a host of non-sequitur spin-offs, and a stellar prequel in its own right, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is the newest title to enter the fold, and was announced to be the final chapter in the Ryū ga Gotoku saga.

Although the future of the property seems uncertain, SEGA hasn’t spared any expense with the finale; Kazuma Kiryu’s last hurrah is every bit of the bittersweet epic that it sets itself out to be and then some.

t’s no secret that I take a particularly guilty joy out of the dichotomy that defines the éclat of video games—it’s a pretty silly identity crisis that I can’t but find amusing. On one hand, I want to the art and impact that video games create to continually expand into legitimate expression of art that can stand on par with some of the greatest literature and film ever produced by mankind, and yet on the other, I still want games to indulge into some of the stupidest shit imaginable.

Sure, that sounds unreasonably flippant, since making headway in one of directions would congruently set back the other, but I’d like to think that we can live in a world where gaming can cater to both of these worlds respectively—Insomniac’s Xbox One exclusive, Sunset Overdrive, is living proof of that.

Yeah, we live in a world where things like Deadpool and Tumblr have saturated our culture with facetious satire and fourth-wall humor to an obnoxiously pandering degree, but the latest effort from the same people behind Ratchet & Clank and Resistance, is one of the most refreshing games to have released in 2014. A world and action woven by the over-the-top chaos and fiction of this modern open-world odyssey of caffeine and attention-deficit youth has all the makings that truly define the special kind of enchantment that only a video game could offer.

he idea of being larger than life leads down many paths to those who aspire for that sort of spotlight; stuff like entertainment, professional sports, or politics, but the most fantastical of them all is obtaining super powers, humanity’s ever present castle in the air.

Sucker Punch ventured into such territory and the grand moral compass that proceeds over it with inFamous, an ambitious open-world game that stumbled a bit out the door before it found the right beat for the tune it was pitching with inFamous 2.

Fast forward to present time and we see Sucker Punch at it again with inFamous Second Son; a sequel that introduces some novel features to the series, but unfortunately regresses the all-too-important advancements from its predecessor to a disappointingly mediocre degree.